At the appointed hour next morning, when yet no ray of sunshine had
touched the gloomy little street, though a limpid sky shone over it,
Basil stood at Aurelia's door. The grey-headed porter silently
admitted him, and he passed by a narrow corridor into a hall lighted
as usual from above, paved with red tiles, here and there trodden
away, the walls coloured a dusky yellow, and showing an imaginary
line of pillars painted in blue. A tripod table, a couch, and a few
chairs were the only furniture. When the visitor had waited for a
few moments a curtain concealing the entrance to the inner part of
the house moved aside, and Aurelia's voice bade her cousin come
forward. He entered a smaller room opening upon a diminutive court
where a few shrubs grew; around the walls hung old and faded
tapestry; the floor was of crude mosaic; the furniture resembled
that of the atrium, with the addition of a brasier.

'I have been anxious for your coming,' were Aurelia's first words.
'Do you think they will let us depart without hindrance? Yesterday I
saw the owner of this house to transact my business with him. It is
Venustus, a curial, a man who has always been well disposed to me.
He said that he must perforce make known to the governor my
intention of leaving the city, and hoped no obstacle would be put in
our way. This morning, before sunrise, a messenger from the citadel
came and put questions to the porter.'

'Venustus? It is with Venustus that Marcian lodges. Yes, Marcian is
here; I know not on what business. It would have been wiser,' he
added, 'to have said nothing, to have gone away as before. When
shall you be ready?'

A moment's reflection and Basil decided to risk immediate departure;
delay and uncertainty were at all times hateful to him, and at the
present juncture intolerable. At once he quitted the house (not
having ventured to speak the name of Veranilda), and in an hour's
time the covered carriage from Puteoli, and another vehicle, were in
waiting. The baggage was brought out; then, as Basil stood in the
hall, he saw Aurelia come forward, accompanied by a slight female
figure, whose grace could not be disguised by the long hooded cloak
which wrapped it from head to foot, allowing not a glimpse of face.
The young man trembled, and followed. He saw the ladies step into
the carriage, and was himself about to mount his horse, when a
military officer, attended by three soldiers, stepped towards him,
and, without phrase of courtesy, demanded his name. Pallid, shaken
with all manner of emotions, Basil replied to this and several other
inquiries, the result being that the two vehicles were ordered to be
driven to the citadel, and he to go thither under guard.

At the entrance to the citadel the carriage drew up and remained
there under guard. Basil was led in, and presently stood before the
military governor of Cumae; this was a Hun named Chorsoman, formerly
one of Belisarius's bodyguard. He spoke Latin barbarously; none the
less was his language direct and perspicuous. The Roman lady wished
to quit Cumae, where she had lived for some years; she purposed,
moreover, to take away with her a maiden of Gothic race, who, though
not treated as a captive, had been under observation since she was
sent to dwell here by Belisarius. This could not pass as a matter of
small moment. Plainly, permission to depart must be sought of the
authorities, and such permission, under the circumstances, could
only be granted in return for substantial payment--a payment in
proportion t6 the lady's rank. It was known that the senator Maximus
had died, and report said that his daughter inherited great wealth.
The price of her passport would be one thousand gold pieces.

Basil knew that Aurelia had not, in the coffer she was taking away,
a quarter of this sum of money. He foresaw endless delay, infinite
peril to his hopes. Schooling a hot tongue to submissive utterance,
he asked that Aurelia might be consulted.

So Basil went forth, and, under the eyes of the guard, held converse
with his cousin. Aurelia was willing to give all the treasure she
carried with her--money, a few ornaments of gold and silver, two
or three vessels of precious metal--everything for immediate
liberty; all together she thought it might be the equivalent of half
the sum demanded. The rest she would swear to pay. This being
reported to Chorsoman, his hideous, ashen-grey countenance assumed a
fierce expression; he commanded that all the baggage on the vehicles
should be brought and opened before him; this was done. Whilst
Basil, boiling with secret rage, saw his cousin's possessions turned
out on to the floor a thought flashed into his mind.

'I ought to inform your Sublimity,' he said, with all the
indifference he could assume, 'that the lady Aurelia despatched two
days ago a courier to Rome apprising the noble commandant Bessas of
her father's death, and of her intention to arrive in the city as
soon as possible, and to put her means at his disposal for the
defence of Rome against King Totila.'

'The widow of a Goth, yes, but no longer a heretic,' answered Basil
boldly, half believing what he said.

He saw that he had spoken to some purpose. The Hun blinked his
little eyes, gazed greedily at the money, and was about to speak
when a soldier announced that a Roman named Marcian desired
immediate audience, therewith handing to the governor a piece of
metal which looked like a large coin. Chorsoman had no sooner
glanced at this than he bade admit the Roman; but immediately
changing his mind, he went out into another room. On his return,
after a quarter of an hour, he gruffly announced that the travellers
were free to depart.

'We humbly thank your Clemency,' said Basil, his heart leaping in
joy. 'Does your Greatness permit me to order these trifles to be
removed?'

'Except the money,' replied Chorsoman, growling next moment, 'and
the vessels'; then snarling with a savage glance about him, 'and the
jewels.'

Not till the gates of Cumae were behind them, and they had entered
the cavern in the hill, did Basil venture to recount what had
happened. He alighted from his horse, and walking through the gloom
beside the carriage he briefly narrated all in a whisper to
Aurelia--all except his own ingenious device for balking the Hun's
cupidity. What means Marcian had employed for their release he could
but vaguely conjecture; that would be learned a few days hence when
his friend came again to Surrentum. Aurelia's companion in the
carriage, still hooded and cloaked, neither moved nor uttered a
word.

At a distance of some twenty yards from the end of the tunnel,
Felix, riding in advance, checked his horse and shouted. There on
the ground lay a dead man, a countryman, who it was easy to see had
been stabbed to death, and perhaps not more than an hour ago.
Quarrel or robbery, who could say? An incident not so uncommon as
greatly to perturb the travellers; they passed on and came to
Puteoli. Here the waiting boatmen were soon found; the party
embarked; the vessel oared away in a dead calm.

The long voyage was tedious to Basil only because Veranilda remained
unseen in the cabin; the thought of bearing her off; as though she
were already his own, was an exultation, a rapture. When he
reflected on the indignities he had suffered in the citadel rage
burned his throat, and Aurelia, all bitterness at the loss of her
treasure, found words to increase this wrath. A Hun! A Scythian
savage! A descendant perchance of the fearful Attila! He to
represent the Roman Empire! Fit instrument, forsooth, of such an
Emperor as Justinian, whose boundless avarice, whose shameful
subjection to the base-born Theodora, were known to every one. To
this had Rome fallen; and not one of her sons who dared to rise
against so foul a servitude!

'Have patience, cousin,' Basil whispered, bidding her with a glance
beware of the nearest boatman. 'There are some who will not grieve
if Totila--'

'No more than that? To stand, and look on, and play the courtier to
whichever may triumph!'

Basil muttered with himself. He wished he had been bred a soldier
instead of growing to manhood in an age when the nobles of Rome were
held to inglorious peace, their sole career that of the jurist And
Aurelia, brooding, saw him involved beyond recall in her schemes of
vengeance.

The purple evening fell about them, an afterglow of sunset trembling
upon the violet sea. Above the heights of Capreae a star began to
glimmer; and lo, yonder from behind the mountains rose the great orb
of the moon. They were in the harbour at last, but had to wait on
board until a messenger could go to the village and a conveyance
arrive. The litter came, with a horse for Basil; Felix, together
with Aurelia's grey-headed porter and a female slave--these two
the only servants that had remained in the house at Cumae--
followed on foot, and the baggage was carried up on men's shoulders.

'Decius!' cried Basil, in a passionate undertone, when he
encountered his kinsman in the vestibule. 'Decius! we are here--
and one with us whom you know not. Hush! Stifle your curiosity till
to-morrow. Let them pass.'

So had the day gone by, and not once had he looked upon the face of
Veranilda.

He saw her early on the morrow. Aurelia, though the whole villa was
now at her command, chose still to inhabit the house of Proba; and
thither, when the day was yet young, she summoned Basil. The room in
which she sat was hung with pictured tapestry, representing Christ
and the Apostles; crude work, but such as had pleased Faltonia
Proba, whose pious muse inspired her to utter the Gospel in a
Virgilian canto. And at Aurelia's side, bending over a piece of
delicate needlework, sat the Gothic maiden, clad in white, her
flaxen hair, loosely held with silk, falling behind her shoulders,
shadowing her forehead, and half hiding the little ears. At Basil's
entrance she did not look up; at the first sound of his voice she
bent her head yet lower, and only when he directly addressed her,
asking, with all the gentleness his lips could command, whether the
journey had left much fatigue, did she show for a moment her watchet
eyes, answering few words with rare sweetness.

'Be seated, dear my lord,' said his cousin, in the soft, womanly
voice once her habitual utterance. 'There has been so little
opportunity of free conversation, that we have almost, one might
say, to make each other's acquaintance yet. But I hope we may now
enjoy a little leisure, and live as becomes good kinsfolk.'

'And the noble Decius,' pursued Aurelia, 'will, I trust, bestow at
times a little of his leisure upon us. Perhaps this afternoon you
could persuade him to forget his books for half an hour? But let us
speak, to begin with, of sad things which must needs occupy us. Is
it possible, yet, to know when the ship will sail for Rome?'

Aurelia meant, of course, the vessel which would convey her father's
corpse, and the words cast gloom upon Basil, who had all but
forgotten the duty that lay before him. He answered that a week at
least must pass before the sailing, and, as he spoke, kept his eyes
upon Veranilda, whose countenance--or so it seemed to him--had
become graver, perhaps a little sad.

'Is it your purpose to stay long in Rome?' was Aurelia's next
question, toned with rather excessive simplicity.

'To stay long?' exclaimed Basil. 'How can you think it? Perchance I
shall not even enter the city. At Portus, I may resign my duty into
other hands, and so straightway return.'

There was a conflict in Aurelia's mind. Reverence for her father
approved the thought of his remains being transported under the
guardianship of Basil; none the less did she dread this journey, and
feel tempted to hinder it. She rose from her chair.

'Let us walk into the sunshine,' she said. 'The morning is chilly.'
And, as she passed out into the court, hand in hand with Veranilda,
'O, the pleasure of these large spaces, this free air, after the
straight house at Cumae! Do you not breathe more lightly, sweetest?
Come into Proba's garden, and I will show you where I sat with my
broidery when I was no older than you.'

The garden was approached by a vaulted passage. A garden long
reconquered by nature; for the paths were lost in herbage, the seats
were overgrown with creeping plants, and the fountain had crumbled
into ruin. A high wall formerly enclosed it, but, in a shock of
earthquake some years ago, part of this had fallen, leaving a gap
which framed a lovely picture of the inland hills. Basil pulled away
the trailing leafage from a marble hemicycle, and, having spread his
cloak upon it, begged tremorously that Veranilda would rest.

'That wall shall be rebuilt,' said Aurelia, and, as if to inspect
the ruin, wandered away. When she was distant not many paces, Basil
bent to his seated companion, and breathed in a passionate
undertone:

He sought her hand, but at this moment Aurelia turned towards them,
and the maiden, quivering, stood up.

'Perhaps the sun is too powerful,' said Aurelia, with her tenderest
smile. 'My lily has lived so long in the shade.'

They lingered a little on the shadowed side, Aurelia reviving
memories of her early life, then passed again under the vaulted
arch. Basil, whose eyes scarcely moved from Veranilda's face, could
not bring himself to address her in common words, and dreaded that
she would soon vanish. So indeed it befell. With a murmur of apology
to her friend, and a timid movement of indescribable grace in
Basil's direction, she escaped, like a fugitive wild thing, into
solitude.

'Why has she gone?' exclaimed the lover, all impatience. 'I must
follow her--I cannot live away from her! Let me find her again.'

They entered the room where they had sat before, and Aurelia, taking
up the needlework left by Veranilda, showed it to her companion with
admiration.

'She is wondrous at this art. In a contest with Minerva, would she
not have fared better than Arachne? This mourning garment which I
wear is of her making, and look at the delicate work; it was wrought
four years ago, when I heard of my brother's death--wrought in a
few days. She was then but thirteen. In all that it beseems a woman
to know, she is no less skilled. Yonder lies her cithern; she learnt
to touch it, I scarce know how, out of mere desire to soothe my
melancholy, and I suspect--though she will not avow it--that the
music she plays is often her own. In sickness she has tended me with
skill as rare as her gentleness; her touch on the hot forehead is
like that of a flower plucked before sunrise. Hearing me speak thus
of her, what think you, O Basil, must be my trust in the man to whom
I would give her for wife?'

Scarce had Aurelia begun her narrative, when Basil perceived that
his own conjecture, and that of Marcian, had hit the truth.
Veranilda was a great-grandchild of Amalafrida, the sister of King
Theodoric, being born of the daughter of King Theodahad; and her
father was that Ebrimut, whose treachery at the beginning of the
great war delivered Rhegium into the hands of the Greeks. Her
mother, Theodenantha, a woman of noble spirit, scorned the unworthy
Goth, and besought the conqueror to let her remain in Italy, even as
a slave, rather than share with such a husband the honours of the
Byzantine court. She won this grace from Belisarius, and was
permitted to keep with her the little maiden, just growing out of
childhood. But shame and grief had broken her heart; after a few
months of imprisonment at Cumae she died. And Veranilda passed into
the care of the daughter of Maximus.

'For I too was a captive,' said Aurelia, 'and of the same religion
as the orphan child. By happy hazard I had become a friend of her
mother, in those days of sorrow; and with careless scorn our
conquerors permitted me to take Veranilda into my house. As the
years went by, she was all but forgotten; there came a new
governor--this thievish Hun--who paid no heed to us. I looked forward
to a day when we might quit Cumae and live in freedom where we would.
Then something unforeseen befell. Half a year ago, just when the air
of spring began to breathe into that dark, chill house, a distant
kinsman of ours, who has long dwelt in Byzantium--do you know
Olybrius, the son of Probinus?'

'He came to me, as if from my father; but I soon discovered that he
had another mission, his main purpose being to seek for Veranilda.
By whom sent, I could not learn; but he told me that Ebrimut was
dead, and that his son, Veranilda's only brother, was winning glory
in the war with the Persians. For many days I lived in fear lest my
pearl should be torn from me. Olybrius it was, no doubt, who bade
the Hun keep watch upon us, and it can only have been by chance that
I was allowed to go forth unmolested when you led me hither the
first time. He returned to Byzantium, and I have heard no more. But
a suspicion haunts my mind. What if Marcian were also watching
Veranilda?'

'Marcian!' cried the listener incredulously. 'You do not know him.
He is the staunchest and frankest of friends. He knows of my love;
we have talked from heart to heart.'

'Yet it was at his intercession that the Hun allowed us to go; why,
you cannot guess. What if he have power and motives which threaten
Veranilda's peace?'

Basil exclaimed against this as the baseless fear of a woman. Had
there been a previous command from some high source touching the
Gothic maiden, Chorsoman would never have dared to sell her freedom.
As to Marcian's power, that was derived from the authorities at
Rome, and granted him for other ends; if he used it to release
Veranilda, he acted merely out of love to his friend, as would soon
be seen.

'I will hope so,' murmured Aurelia. 'Now you have heard what she
herself desired that I should tell you, for she could not meet your
look until you knew it. Her father's treachery is Veranilda's shame;
she saw her noble mother die for it, and it has made her mourning
keener than a common sorrow. I think she would never have dared to
wed a Goth; all true Goths, she believes in her heart, must despise
her. It is her dread lest you, learning who she is, should find your
love chilled.'

'Call her,' cried Basil, starting to his feet. 'Or let me go to her.
She shall not suffer that fear for another moment. Veranilda!
Veranilda!'

His companion retained and quieted him. He should see Veranilda ere
long. But there was yet something to be spoken of.

'Do I love her, adore her, the less?' exclaimed Basil. 'Does she
shrink from me on that account?'

'I know,' pursued his cousin, 'what the Apostle of the Gentiles has
said: "For the husband who believes not is sanctified by the wife,
and the wife who believes not is sanctified by the husband." None
the less, Veranilda is under the menace of the Roman law; and you,
if it be known that you have wedded her, will be in peril from all
who serve the Emperor--at least in dark suspicion; and will be
slightly esteemed by all of our house.'

The lover paced about, and all at once, with a wild gesture, uttered
his inmost thought.

'What if I care naught for those of our house? And what if the
Emperor of the East is of as little account to me? My country is not
Byzantium, but Rome.'

Aurelia hushed his voice, but her eyes shone with stern gladness as
she stood before him, and took him by the hand, and spoke what he
alone could hear.

'Then unite yourself in faith with those who would make Rome free.
Be one in religion with the brave Goths--with Veranilda.'

'I scarce know what that religion is, O Aurelia,' came from him
stammeringly. 'I am no theologian; I never cared to puzzle my head
about the mysteries which men much wiser than I declare to pass all
human understanding. Ask Decius if he can defend the faith of
Athanasius against that of the Arians; he will smile, and shake his
head in that droll way he has. I believe,' he added after a brief
hesitancy, 'in Christ and in the Saints. Does not Veranilda also?'

The temptress drew back a little, seated herself; yielded to
troublous thought. It was long since she had joined in the worship
of a congregation, for at Cumae there was no Arian church. Once only
since her captivity had she received spiritual comfort from an Arian
priest, who came to that city in disguise. What her religion truly
was she could not have declared, for the memories of early life were
sometimes as strong in her as rancour against the faith of her
enemies. Basil's simple and honest utterance touched her conscience.
She put an end to the conversation, promising to renew it before
long; whilst Basil, for his part, went away to brood, then to hold
converse with Decius.

Through all but the whole of Theodoric's reign, Italy had enjoyed a
large toleration in religion: Catholics, Arians, and even Jews
observed their worship under the protection of the wise king. Only
in the last few years of his life did he commit certain acts of
harshness against his Catholic subjects, due to the wrath that was
moved in him by a general persecution of the Arians proclaimed at
Byzantium. His Gothic successors adhered to Theodoric's better
principle, and only after the subjugation of the land by Belisarius
had Arianism in Italy been formally condemned. Of course it was
protected by the warring Goths: Totila's victories had now once more
extended religious tolerance over a great part of the country; the
Arian priesthood re-entered their churches; and even in Rome the
Greek garrison grew careless of the reviving heresy. Of these things
did Decius speak, when the distressed lover sought his counsel. No
one more liberal than Decius; but he bore a name which he could not
forget, and in his eyes the Goth was a barbarian, the Gothic woman
hardly above the level of a slave. That Basil should take a Gothic
wife, even one born of a royal line, seemed to him an indignity.
Withheld by the gentleness of his temper from saying all he thought,
he spoke only of the difficulties which would result from such a
marriage, and when, in reply, Basil disclosed his mind, though less
vehemently than to Aurelia, Decius fell into meditation. He, too,
had often reflected with bitterness on the results of that
restoration of Rome to the Empire which throughout the Gothic
dominion most of the Roman nobles had never ceased to desire; all
but was he persuaded to approve the statesmanship of Cassiodorus.
Nevertheless, he could not, without shrinking, see a kinsman pass
over to the side of Totila.

He had not yet seen Veranilda. When, in the afternoon, Basil led him
into the ladies' presence, and his eyes fell upon that white-robed
loveliness, censure grew faint in him. Though a Decius, he was a man
of the sixth century after Christ; his mind conceived an ideal of
human excellence which would have been unintelligible to the Decii
of old; in his heart meekness and chastity had more reverence than
perhaps he imagined. He glanced at Basil; he understood. Though the
future still troubled him, opposition to the lover's will must, he
knew, be idle.

Several hours before, Basil had scratched on a waxed tablet a few
emphatic lines, which his cousin allowed to be transmitted to
Veranilda. They assured her that what he had learned could only--
if that were possible--increase his love, and entreated her to
grant him were it but a moment's speech after the formal visit,
later in the day. The smile with which she now met him seemed at
once gratitude and promise; she was calmer, and less timid. Though
she took little part in the conversation, her words fell very
sweetly after the men's speech and the self-confident tones of
Aurelia; her language was that of an Italian lady, but in the accent
could be marked a slight foreignness, which to Basil's ear had the
charm of rarest music, and even to Decius sounded not unpleasing.
Under the circumstances, talk, confined to indifferent subjects,
could not last very long; as soon as it began to flag, Decius found
an excuse for begging permission to retire. As though wishing for a
word with him in confidence, Aurelia at the same time passed out of
the room into the colonnade. Basil and Veranilda were left alone.